Jocara Newsletter
Nov 16, 2004

Firstly, our apologies for the big gap since the last newsletter.  Put it 
down to poor HF radio propagation, key people in the communication chain 
on conference leave, and laziness!  Firstly, we are still in Rodrigues.  
After the inverter quit, the freezer followed soon after; probably a 
casualty of the 'dirty' waveform of our backup system.  This impacts our 
POP air sampling project, so we want it fixed.  Then we discovered some 
rot in the bowsprit, structurally serious.  This was about the time that 
the hurricane/cyclone 'Arola' formed a few hundred miles to the NE of us, 
heading right for the island...  That gave us a few anxious days, not 
daring to leave with a damaged bowsprit (that holds the tension in the 
rigging and hence the mast itself in heavy air) yet afraid of how we might 
weather out serious winds if we stayed in harbour.  Fortunately, Arola 
petered out and is now just an annoying low pressure centre to the north 
of us, bringing some rain and haze.  The new inverter arrived, and was 
duly installed.  We also got a replacement freezer compressor, but are 
still struggling to find someone on the island who can install it.  We 
searched high and low for a 3m long piece of hard timber to replace the 
bowsprit, but there's none on the island.  Eventually we found a 
traditional boat builder in the south of the island who cut us a block of 
'Bedamia' wood, enough to replace the rotted parts as a temporary repair.  
In between we've also been supporting 'Shoals Rodrigues', establishing a 
new survey site on the west of the island, where there are many more 
species of coral fish than we've seen elsewhere.  We caught a tuna on the 
way around the island to get to the site, providing sashimi and sushi for 
Tom Hooper's leaving bar-b-que.  We also hosted two visits of local school 
children who are part of 'Club Mer', a marine conservation education 
programme of Shoals Rodrigues.  They took a tour of Jocara and we showed 
them videos made by Singapore students, provided by the Ministry of 
Education in Singapore, and our own short movies of climbing Krakatau and 
life on passage.   Casper and Alex are finding a few local friends to hang 
out with, which gets them out and running around outside for a break from 
time to time.   If we can just wrap up the bowsprit repairs (the final 
touches requiring fibreglassing that can only be done in dry weather)and 
get the freezer going, plus re-calibrating the fickle autopilot, we can be 
out of here and headed to the 'Cargados Caragos', otherwise known as St. 
Brandon's, and then on to Mayotte in the Comoros islands.  It's about time 
we left and did some sailing again, also fishing; the local sports fishing 
boats come in regularly with Wahoo, Dorado, Tuna and sometimes Marlin 
aboard.  

If you sent an email to any of us at an 'jocara.net' email addresse, we 
apologise that these were all downloaded and then lost on a virus-ridden 
PC that had to have its drive reformatted.  If important, please send 
again, via mandar@arl.nus.edu.sg if urgent and short.

P.S. Don't forget to check out our website at http://www.jocara.net for 
updates, pics and short movies, also archived newsletters.  Anyone can 
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